Thursday 16 July 2009

The Pink Ribbon

Seven heads sit in the window of The Pink Ribbon, the best shop in the world. Four of them wear dated wigs and all of them bear lesions. Beneath them ponytails hang on hooks, fifty pence a piece, and a plastic fern in a plastic pot mourns beneath a pall of dust. In an advertisement for a forgotten scent a blue-bleached woman smiles at Paris. Three combs still cling to their cardboard stand. Next to the till sits an Arsenal FC annual from 1982. The sign displays a five-digit phone number. I have lived in this neck of the woods for five years or so, and The Pink Ribbon has never been open, but one night when I was wending my squiffy way home I stopped as usual to gaze at the insectoid heads of the 50s hairdryers and the endless tubs of redundant unguents and when my eyes adapted to the gloom I saw a man behind the till, staring back at me.

9 comments:

  1. 'redundant unguents'. Is spooky tale.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like this blog. You're a good writer, aren't you?

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is totally freaky (and brilliant, of course). Sounds like a start to a short story. I want more!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think The Pink Ribbon is where the cat with the human face goes to gets its claws tipped with mercury.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The man wears the wigs, doesn't he?
    We should sneak in one night, it would be like The Goonies.

    ReplyDelete
  6. BestGirl - let's wear capes! Although I have a feeling that once you're inside The Pink Ribbon, you're not coming out again.

    P.S. Did you solve the Freddie Fruitcake clue? I nearly sh*t myself.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Plastic ferns are the only kind that don't die at my house.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just want to talk with the 7 heads and hear all about what they have seen.

    ReplyDelete
  9. hereinfranklin - It's when the plastic ones die that you have to start to worry...

    Mongoliangirl - I bet they speak in tongues.

    ReplyDelete